“We should be back before noon,” Luke reassured his second-in-command. “We’ll leave as soon as the sun is up.”
“As soon as you can,” Wedge’s voice was tinny over the encrypted comlink. “Camp is battened down for the night and the sentry droids are patrolling the perimeter.”
“And the Skyhoppers will keep Janson and Naeco out of trouble?” Luke asked wryly.
“Kitchen patrol is helping right now, but that’ll only work until they decide to improve our rations. And we’re not out here for shore leave.”
“No, we’ve got a narrow window and there’s every chance that General Rieekan will call us back early.” Luke could imagine Wedge’s grimace. “We’re secure here, and we’ll be out with first light. See you tomorrow, Wedge.”
“Goodnight, boss.” The channel hung up with a hiss of static for a moment. “Don’t do anything stupid, Luke.”
“I won’t,” Luke reassured him with a frown. What is Wedge getting at?
The channel clicked off and the encrypted connection dropped. Luke flicked his comlink to standby and laid it down on the garage workbench.
“Perimeter’s checked,” Mara said, her posture more relaxed than her tone as she walked through the door. “Gate is locked, and I rigged an alarm on it – someone comes in, even with Kessik’s code, and it’ll squeal our comlinks. Kessik actually has a decent intruder detection system for everything else. Better than I’d expect on a Rim world like this.”
“Too many desperate people around,” Luke commented. “From talking to a few locals, the harvest this season was better than average, so the risk is low. Some seasons the harvest is terrible, and then some people start looking for a quick solution.” He watched her for a moment; now that they were in relative privacy, she’d freed her red-gold hair from the shawl, though it was matted with sweat. Luke was sure he wasn’t much better; months off-planet meant Tatooine now felt hotter than it had for nineteen years of his life.
Mara moved over to one of the two cots in the garage and sat down. She hesitated for a moment, then kicked her boots off and laid down completely, head up, her blaster still on her hip. “You’re from this planet, aren’t you?” she asked abruptly.
“Yes. Born and raised. Or raised, anyway.”
“Not born?” Mara asked.
“I’m not sure what to believe,” Luke said dryly.
Silence stretched, and Luke was just beginning to suspect she’d nodded off when she quietly asked, “Why?”
He opened his mouth to answer but stopped himself, replaying the conversation they’d had a few days prior. Promise me that you won’t push this on me. Nothing about the Force. Nothing about the Jedi. Nothing about lightsabers. Visibility is death, Skywalker. The Empire hunts people like me. Like you. Promise me you won’t push me. Where did that line lay? But this is about me, not her. I’m answering her questions, not demanding answers from her.
Luke took a deep breath to order his thoughts before he spoke. “I grew up on a moisture farm here on Tatooine, raised by my Uncle Owen and my Aunt Beru. Good people, hardworking, smart, independent, tougher than rock. And they lied to me. They told me my father was a navigator for a freighter working for the Hutts, moving spice, and that he’d gotten mixed up with some bad people and died. They were always trying to keep me away from that world because it’d done in my own father.”
“But that wasn’t the truth,” Mara said.
“No. But it was what I believed until Uncle Owen bought two droids from the local Jawas that really belonged to the Rebel Alliance and were carrying a message for Ben Kenobi. Ben is…was…an old hermit who kept to himself.” He decided not to delve too deep into the details. “When I brought the droids to him, Ben told me they’d lied. My father wasn’t a navigator, he was a Jedi Knight who’d fought in the Clone Wars.” Luke strove to keep the bitterness out of his tone. “Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru were afraid if I knew the truth I’d want to become a Jedi like my father.”
“So you ran off with Kenobi and joined the Rebellion?” she asked.
“The Empire came while I was gone, looking for the droids. Burned the farm down. Owen and Beru…” he shook his head. “After that, there wasn’t anything to keep me on Tatooine. So yes, I left and joined the Rebellion.”
Mara was silent, and Luke desperately wanted to ask what about you? but his instincts told him she’d view the question as prying.
“Ben told me my father had been murdered by Darth Vader. He promised to teach me about the Force, and we started while we were on the Millennium Falcon, but we didn’t get far before Vader killed Ben on the Death Star.” Luke’s hands curled into fists. “From what I learned afterward, that monster has a lot of blood on his hands. And someday, I hope, he’ll have to face justice for it.”
“Vader is a monster,” Mara agreed, and the vehemence in her voice surprised him.
He waited but she didn’t expound further. He stole a glance at her and saw she was still lying on her back, one hand resting on the pendant that normally was concealed under her clothing but occasionally worked itself free.
“It’s strange, being back here,” Luke said at last. “Tatooine hasn’t changed, but I have.”
“What were they like?” she ventured. “Your aunt and uncle.”
“Beru was kind,” he said, and an image of the older woman floated in his mind. “Soft-hearted. When I made mistakes or acted out, she was the one who’d forgive me or talk me down. But she worked hard every day of her life.” He smiled a little. “Owen was a hard man. Not cruel, but hard because you have to be to survive and eke out a living on this miserable rock. He tried to keep me out of trouble. I can only imagine how I would have turned out without him riding me so hard. How I managed to talk him into letting me get my old Skyhopper, I’ll never understand.”
Mara was silent for a while after that before she finally offered, voice so quiet Luke had to strain to hear, “I don’t know who my parents were, either. Hera’s the only person I have left who tried to raise me.”
Questions immediately jumbled together in Luke’s mind, but he pushed them back down. “Wedge is terrified of her,” he said dryly instead.
“I keep expecting her to show up and drag me back to the Ghost,” she said, voice no louder than before.
Another memory surfaced for Luke, back on Yavin. If I’m in your squadron, I follow the orders you give me and no one else’s, she’d said. “As long as you want to be a Rogue, you’re a Rogue,” Luke said aloud.
She was quiet again for a few minutes. “Did you have friends here?”
“Yes. Well, one good friend, Biggs, and plenty more that I thought were my friends. I never really fit in, though,” Luke admitted. “After Biggs left for the Academy, I started to see the truth of it. But I don’t miss them, except Biggs.”
“He was in the trench with you,” Mara said, a statement of fact.
“Yes. Wedge took a bad hit and pulled out. Biggs covered me until he died.” One more death Darth Vader needs to pay for, Luke told himself, forcing his hands to relax. “It’s strange, being here. And this was my idea.”
“Training?”
“Tatooine,” he clarified. “The Empire doesn’t care about it, and between the Hutts and how remote it is, there’s no chance the Rebellion would set up a permanent base here. So I proposed it as a temporary location for Rogue Squadron to train.” He shook his head. “I didn’t realize it’d feel this strange, being back here.”
The night wore on, and neither of them slept.
The first of the two suns was peeking over the horizon, but the Rogues’ camp remained shrouded in shadow in the mouth of the canyon as Wedge crossed from the officer barracks to the temporary mess hall. The heat soaked through his fresh clothing, and he could feel himself already sweating. This heat is going to get old very fast. He checked his datapad as he walked, reviewing the automated reporting from the sentry droids he’d deployed to patrol the camp perimeter at night.
Based on the same spherical frame as the target remotes used for blaster practice and lightsaber training by one aspiring Jedi, the sentries were a new innovation the Alliance had begun deploying at temporary bases. A permanent base would use embedded sensors to monitor for any local disturbances, but those units required time to install and configure. The sentries, on the other hand, were great for locations that would not be held for long. They required more maintenance and regular charging, but they could be deployed and in place in minutes. The three-month training window Rogue Squadron was theoretically operating in was a stretch for temporary, but Luke had asked for the droids anyway, arguing that keeping them charged was less demanding for the small team.
He rubbed his cheek wearily. Someone was near the perimeter. From the inside. He checked the data again. Two people. Because I told everyone to go in pairs. But they didn’t breach it.
Wedge pondered that for a moment. I’ll keep an eye on it, he decided, but I’m not going to make an issue of it unless someone actually leaves the camp.
The perpetrators could be almost any of the Rogues, save Wedge himself, who was asleep at the time, and Luke and Mara, who were in Mos Entha. Stars, I hope Skywalker didn’t do anything stupid last night. That could make this whole training deployment very awkward.
The mess was less empty than he expected.
Cesi Eirriss was sitting at one of the prefab tables, a battered durasteel tumbler of caf on the table in front of her and a datapad in-hand. The Twi’lek was wide awake and engrossed in her reading. Karie Neth and the new pilot, Samoc Farr, were sitting across from her, though both of them looked more asleep than awake.
“Captain,” Cesi greeted without looking up, a lek twitching.
Wedge picked up a mug. It was wrapped in camouflage netting, secured with space tape. He shook his head and moved to the dispenser. “What’s the political treatise of choice today, Eirriss?” he asked as he filled the mug.
“Treatise on Starfighter Tactics,” she said dryly. “Not my usual light reading, but it seemed like a better choice given our current mission.”
“Adar Tallon’s book,” Wedge said approvingly. “That was required reading at Skystrike. Good primer on the fundamentals.” He snorted. “Had to be good, given that Imperial instructors were still assigning it after Tallon deserted and disappeared. Most of the time, if an officer gives the Empire a black eye, any material associated with him disappears. Tallon’s work hasn’t.”
Samoc Farr spoke up. “Captain, Tallon’s biggest focus is on what he calls the five stages of a combat engagement. Detection, closing, attack, maneuver, disengagement.” She frowned. “Isn’t that obvious? Why formalize it?”
Wedge moved over to the table and sat down, mug held in both hands as he inhaled the aroma that he was certain smelled better than the caf was about to taste. “The reason he categorizes and formalizes stages of air combat is so that pilots understand what point they’re at in a combat engagement, which affects which tactics they should employ. Would you like an example?”
“Absolutely, sir.”
“So here’s a scenario. Rogue Squadron is in open space and we’ve got sensor contact with a squadron of TIE fighters. We’ve both detected each other, and the distance between the two fighter groups is falling. What combat stage are we in?”
“Closing, sir,” Karie said sleepily.
“During the closing stage, the Rogues are doing their best to get an opening advantage over the Imps, including bracket maneuvers, spreading out, and so on. But if we’re in the maneuver stage, we’d be doing a lot of the same things. So what’s the difference?”
Samoc shook her head wordlessly.
“During that initial head-to-head, standard tactics for an X-wing unit will be to double-front our shields,” Wedge said. “Leaves our tails exposed, but we can shrug off more fire from the front where we know it’s coming from. During the maneuver stage, we’re likely tangled up with the survivors from that head-to-head, so we’re going to stabilize our shields forward and back, even while we’re doing those pincers, brackets, and so forth. We need to know the stage so we know what we should and shouldn’t be doing. The harder you train, the more you can do correctly on reflex.”
“So it’s not categorization for the sake of military analysts,” Samoc said slowly. “There’s actually value for us as pilots.”
Wedge nodded. “The point isn’t to fly exactly like Tallon’s primer. The point is to develop the right instincts for the moment you’re living in during a dogfight.” He offered a smile. “Don’t worry, Farr. We’re all here to learn.”
Both suns had cleared the horizon by the time Mara gave Skywalker the thumbs-up to fly.
The Skyhopper’s cockpit was cramped. Theoretically, the airspeeder would fit two; Mara was not large, Skywalker was a slender man barely of average height, and they were still bumping shoulders as he worked the Skyhopper’s controls and she monitored the ferry-link through her datapad. It should have felt uncomfortable.
Mara wondered, briefly, why it didn’t.
“Starting the engine,” Skywalker said a moment before he hit the ignition. The ion engine lit with a low rumble, more felt than heard. Mara eyed her datapad and watched as the five other Skyhoppers all came alive in sequence, engines showing operational status. He glanced over at her. “We good?”
“We’ve got engine starts across the board,” she confirmed. “Let’s keep it low and slow until we’re out of Mos Entha, at least. If something goes wrong, I’d rather we didn’t send a stray Skyhopper into someone’s house at a couple hundred kay pee aitch.”
Skywalker nodded in agreement, feeding power slowly to the repulsorlifts. The Skyhopper rose out of the fenced-in garage yard, and one-by-one the rest of the airspeeders rose to join it.
“Less jitter on four this morning,” Mara observed. “Wonder if it’s heat-related?”
“Keep an eye on it.”
“Like I wasn’t going to already.”
Skywalker added power to the engine, and the airspeeder began to glide forward slowly. They were perhaps ten meters off the ground; high enough to avoid colliding with anything this far out from the center of Mos Entha, but low enough to set down in a hurry if something went wrong.
Even at the very slow pace, it took less than ten minutes to clear the outer edge of the city. A belated thought occurred to Mara. “What did you do with the speeder bike?”
“It’s strapped under the belly of this T-16,” Skywalker said with a smile. “Didn’t want Alliance Supply to be angry with me for leaving assets behind.”
Mara frowned. “How does that affect maneuvering and speed?”
He glanced over at her. “I can feel it, but it’s not a big hindrance. Why?”
“Ferry-link is mirroring your controls,” she pointed out. “If this Skyhopper handles differently, it means everything else will fall out of position by comparison. Or try to pass us, actually.”
He grimaced. “I didn’t think of that.”
“It’s just one more thing to factor into the trim,” Mara said, no real irritation in her voice as she made adjustments on the datapad. “None of these things are new. I figured I was going to have to individually adjust each one of them anyway.” She looked up and out the canopy. “Bring us up to a quarter throttle, but do it slow. I’m going to space the formation out but try to keep the airspeed as synchronized as I can. Once we’re up to full throttle, the less maneuvering you do, the better.”
It took twenty minutes of slow flying, with throttle adjustments and long, slow banks to port and starboard before Mara finally nodded in satisfaction. “Alright, we should mostly keep formation like this. Bring us up to cruise speed, slowly.” She glanced over at him, saw him meet her eyes but then look away.
Huh.
Skywalker brought them up to speed, and though he had already proved to be one of the best fighter pilots she’d met, he apparently had the patience of a farmboy driving a heavily laden landspeeder. With a caution that tested even her patience, he got all six of the Skyhoppers up to speed, now at six hundred meters of altitude, and on course for the Rogues’ camp.
Though the T-16s were capable of far greater speed than the Aratech bike had been, by mutual agreement Skywalker kept their airspeed restrained. The suns crept higher in the sky as baked desert rolled by lazily below them. Maintaining the necessary trim to keep the airspeeders together proved to be a moderately annoying task; it was not so demanding as to keep Mara’s attention fully, but required tweaking often enough that she couldn’t afford to look away from the datapad much, either.
“When we first got to Tatooine, you said there was nothing to see,” Mara commented as she looked over the seemingly endless desert. “I think I understand that now.”
“Try living here,” Skywalker replied, his voice as dry as the air. “The nothing is everywhere.”
They flew on in companionable silence, giving Mara far too much time to think about the night prior, what Skywalker had said, and what he hadn’t asked.
For the first time in well over three years, she was tempted to talk about all of it, but she restrained the urge.
You barely know him, even if you’ve fought together. Visibility is death, Mara.
But he would understand in all the ways Hera doesn’t.
Visibility is death, Mara.
As the twin suns warmed the air from merely hot to stifling, rising thermals began to buffet the Skyhopper, the ride becoming rough. Skywalker glanced over at her. “How much maneuvering can your trim take?”
“Hard to know until we try it. Why?”
Skywalker looked forward out the Skyhopper’s canopy again. “The thermals are predictable, but I’ll need to maneuver some.”
Mara lifted the datapad. “Keep it gradual and I think we’ll be fine. Don’t forget about that cracked ion manifold, either. I’d hate to crash that Skyhopper when we’re almost back to camp.”
He gave her a grin that was ninety percent fighter pilot and ten percent Luke Skywalker, all white teeth. “We can’t have that.”
Skywalker was as good as his word, adding gradual banks to their previously-direct flight path, while adding more throttle. The ride immediately smoothed, and though Mara had no idea how he was predicting the turbulent air, he clearly knew something she didn’t. She loosened the formation further, though it strained the limits of the ferry-link system; Incom clearly hadn’t intended it to be used to fly half a dozen Skyhoppers spaced over half a kilometer.
It was nearly four hours of flight time before the vaguely familiar stone fingers began to rise toward them, well below the Skyhopper. Skywalker began shedding velocity and altitude.
Mara gave him a questioning look.
“We’ll set them down half a kilometer from the camp,” he explained. “I don’t want to try to bring them all in on ferry-link right into camp. The deposits cause sensor interference, and if the ferry-link jitters out at the wrong time, we could have a wreck.”
“Makes sense.”
Mara tightened the formation and trim, bringing the Skyhoppers back together as they descended. The ferry-link on the number four Skyhopper began jittering like crazy as they dropped down below the tips of the stone fingers, and Mara winced, finger hovering over the cutoff, but it held long enough for Skywalker to get all the T-16s down to the ground before she shut it down.
Now unencumbered, Skywalker lifted off and flew the last half-kilometer to the training camp like a madman, blasting over the camp at full throttle before reversing with a flourish, a quick barrel roll, and setting the airspeeder down with the touch of a falling feather.
Mara looked over at him, nonplussed, until he met her eyes. “Next time,” she said, “I’m flying and you can run the datapad.”